Where I Hoped Rock Would Be
Series by artist Laura Dolp.
Artist's Note
Artist's Note
As an artist and writer, I take a research-driven approach that combines printmaking and literary texts. My collages incorporate imagery of pre-historical archeological sites and their post-classical texts; in particular, islands of human habitation in the Mediterranean Basin like Sardinia, Cyprus, and Malta, or sites on the peninsulas of the Baltic Sea, where the evidence of pre-history still maintains its hold on the modern landscape.
Traced aerial maps serve as building blocks for the work and I organize each series around the same archeological site. I think of collaged interventions as a process of reverse excavation and interpretation, where material history is fused into layers, creating a contemporary palimpsest. Completed pieces begin a new life as an object of inscription, erasure, and memory. I experience repeated encounters with an image as a form of ritual, and my redress of that image as indicative of the deepening that ritual offers. Over time, my work becomes an act of modern pilgrimage.
Each series utilizes a unique combination of site images and texts. My research includes in situ experiences of each archeological site and combines physical modeling and a deep-listening practice. Experience of a site is crucial to realizing a form. Upon return to the studio, the process is sensitized to what I have absorbed about a place–its material properties, purposes as defensive or burial, cardinal orientation to light, placement to water source, the social function of its spaces, and its record of growth and decay. I then choose a literary text that shares geographical origins to the site, and addresses themes of materiality, language, impermanence, and home.
About this series
“Where I Hoped Rock Would Be” (2022-2023) is a series of eighteen sewn-paper collages. The building block is a drawing of Ħaġar Qim, a temple site located in Malta from a prehistoric civilization that existed between 3600 and 2500 BCE. Its footprint is collaged with colored pencil, ink, graphite, raw silk fabric, and a lithograph of the fifteenth century poem “Il-Kantilena” by Maltese poet Pietru Caxaro. Caxaro writes in a Semitic language that is a synthesis of late medieval Sicilian Arabic and Romance languages. Silk thread binds his astonishingly modern poem – addressing despair, resilience, impermanence, and the geographies of place and belonging – to its physical crossroads.
Work list
LITHOS 2.4 (35.49.40n|14.26.32e), 2022
38cm x 48cm
Lithograph with collaged Japanese paper, raw silk, and colored pencilLITHOS 3.1 (35.49.40n|14.26.32e), 2022
38cm x 48cm
Lithograph with collaged Japanese paper, colored pencil, and inkLITHOS 6.2 (35.49.40n|14.26.32e), 2023
38cm x 48cm
Lithograph with collaged Japanese paper, raw silk, colored pencil, and sewn silk threadLITHOS 7.2 (35.49.40n|14.26.32e), 2023
38cm x 48cm
Lithograph with collaged Japanese paper, raw silk, colored pencil, and sewn silk thread
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Artist's Note
As an artist and writer, I take a research-driven approach that combines printmaking and literary texts. My collages incorporate imagery of pre-historical archeological sites and their post-classical texts; in particular, islands of human habitation in the Mediterranean Basin like Sardinia, Cyprus, and Malta, or sites on the peninsulas of the Baltic Sea, where the evidence of pre-history still maintains its hold on the modern landscape.
Traced aerial maps serve as building blocks for the work and I organize each series around the same archeological site. I think of collaged interventions as a process of reverse excavation and interpretation, where material history is fused into layers, creating a contemporary palimpsest. Completed pieces begin a new life as an object of inscription, erasure, and memory. I experience repeated encounters with an image as a form of ritual, and my redress of that image as indicative of the deepening that ritual offers. Over time, my work becomes an act of modern pilgrimage.
Each series utilizes a unique combination of site images and texts. My research includes in situ experiences of each archeological site and combines physical modeling and a deep-listening practice. Experience of a site is crucial to realizing a form. Upon return to the studio, the process is sensitized to what I have absorbed about a place–its material properties, purposes as defensive or burial, cardinal orientation to light, placement to water source, the social function of its spaces, and its record of growth and decay. I then choose a literary text that shares geographical origins to the site, and addresses themes of materiality, language, impermanence, and home.
About this series
“Where I Hoped Rock Would Be” (2022-2023) is a series of eighteen sewn-paper collages. The building block is a drawing of Ħaġar Qim, a temple site located in Malta from a prehistoric civilization that existed between 3600 and 2500 BCE. Its footprint is collaged with colored pencil, ink, graphite, raw silk fabric, and a lithograph of the fifteenth century poem “Il-Kantilena” by Maltese poet Pietru Caxaro. Caxaro writes in a Semitic language that is a synthesis of late medieval Sicilian Arabic and Romance languages. Silk thread binds his astonishingly modern poem – addressing despair, resilience, impermanence, and the geographies of place and belonging – to its physical crossroads.
Work list
LITHOS 2.4 (35.49.40n|14.26.32e), 2022
38cm x 48cm
Lithograph with collaged Japanese paper, raw silk, and colored pencilLITHOS 3.1 (35.49.40n|14.26.32e), 2022
38cm x 48cm
Lithograph with collaged Japanese paper, colored pencil, and inkLITHOS 6.2 (35.49.40n|14.26.32e), 2023
38cm x 48cm
Lithograph with collaged Japanese paper, raw silk, colored pencil, and sewn silk threadLITHOS 7.2 (35.49.40n|14.26.32e), 2023
38cm x 48cm
Lithograph with collaged Japanese paper, raw silk, colored pencil, and sewn silk thread
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